i saw you outside a bar in atlanta, fuckin’ with a broken bike chain.you were sitting on the curb, with the stern face of a surgeonadjusting the metal link with precision.

i imagine you looked like thatwhen you used to do tattoosin the town we used to live in further south,where one girl had your name on her thigh. nobody round here like him anymore, she’d sighbefore lifting her skirt even higher.

it’d been a decade at leastsince we last spokebut i’d heard about the snakes.took a seat on the curb with the nerve to ask you okay? since they almost took your life some years before.

you laughed, said sure,then showed me the scarsridden up and down your leg.with a grin on your faceyou said they came like punchesbefore you flatlined twicein the hospital bed you lay in for months,however long it took to get the tasteof metal out of your mouth.

maybe that’s what venom tastes like? it’s a shame that girl with your name on her thigh wasn’t lurking around while you were curled on the ground, entering a state of paralysis. she had a big mouth, i’m sure she would’ve bent down to suck the poison right outand now it’d be her kidneys on the fritz instead.but what a waste of perfectly good venomto serve a soul like oil on wheels--you skipped town after you healedyet she lives down there still,dripping tears into her beer and rippling her reflection on how life isn’t fair, it just isn’ti’ve seen your art on the cartoon network,saw you on the front page of the ajcwith gloves on your tattooed hands, holding jim henson’s original creationwith the same grin on your face when you were showing me your scars outside that bar in atlanta.